Harbor Hazing and Hysteria

Working in a restaurant can be very exciting: there’s people moving around everywhere, tons of noise, lots of chaos. But it can also be extremely monotonous. Six days a week, I walk into the grill, greet the same general people, punch in, and walk out to the hostess stand. Throughout the day, I go through the same motions and say the same things, most usually “How Many?”, “Would you like to sit inside or out?” and “Ok, you can have a seat over there and I will give you a shout when we’re ready for you!”. Many of us joke about how we’ve even adopted “waitress voice”, a much higher tone of voice in which we recite these lines.


Unfortunately, all this repetition really starts to make you feel as if you’re living the same day over and over. Coupled with the aggravation of obnoxious customers, it can all make you go a little crazy by the end of July. For the past couple of weeks the staff has been getting stranger and stranger as they come up with new ways to liven up or just make it through their days. Last week for instance, I tried to make it through my whole shift without turning left, a la Zoolander. I spent my entire morning making spastic and dramatic spins every time I had to “Hang a Louie”’.

But its when there is no manager on duty that we have the most fun. Like a group of twelve year olds whose teacher has left the classroom, we all go nuts when we know there is no one nearby to reprimand us for our immature and completely unprofessional behavior. Last week, on one very hot day, Maggie and George showed up to breakfast with water guns and, because Erin and Gary weren’t there, a pretty large water gun fight broke out on the front porch, right in the presence of the customers. It continued in the back for the rest of the day, and I was constantly being startled with a shot of water to my face whenever I walked through the kitchen.

On another day, we started a giant dance party in the wait station. Though the kitchen guys usually play sublime, reggae, or laid-back hip-hop, for some reason they were rocking the club music, so we all busted out dancing in the middle of our shift, even creating “the Grill”, our signature dance move. At the height of the party, as George had Tara bent over while he grinded against her from behind, Mike , the owner of Harbor Grill and a pretty intimidating man, walked into the wait station. Everyone froze as Mike stared at them. Then, suddenly, he burst out laughing. After all, how else do you react to a situation like that? Later, when he returned to the kitchen, he walked through and pointed at each of us as he told us“You’re fired. And you’re fired. And you’re definitely fired”. You know it’s a good day when you can even make Mike loosen up a little.

But of course, we’ve all always been a little strange like this. We speak in weird voices, openly fart in the wait station, and take shots of grenadine to pump ourselves up on busy days. However, the largest portion of our time is probably spent annoying each other. My friend Bryan and I have a fun little game where we just push our fingers into each others faces until one or the other gives up and pulls away. He usually wins, seeing as I have a very sensitive neck, but regardless I think I do a nice job of getting on his nerves. And as far as ball busting goes, a common habit at the grill, I can no longer count the number of times I’ve been called a slut, a bitch, or a fat ass, but it’s probably somewhere around the same amount as I’ve asked Billy to make me a meatball omelette or told Gosia to start speaking American or go the hell back to Poland.

But, of course, our harassment is done all in good fun. It has even come to be an expression of endearment. In fact today, when Billy told me my new shirt was nice, i was oddly offended. I waited for a "but" or a "for a change" but he actually said something genuinely nice to me. I was totally offended. Was he mad at me? What had I done? It wasn't until later that day when he made some comment about how I "get around" that I knew things were ok between us, and that his previous comment was just a rare change of character.

But seriously, when we’re not insulting each other, we all get along very well. I love the people I work with, and have really come to realize just how much this past weekend. Because my parents were in town visiting, a bunch of us went with them out to dinner at Harbor. Though, the hostess on duty made a mistake and we ended up having an immense wait for our table, everyone working was so nice. They brought us out free drinks, complementary appetizers, and several of them came out to say hi and ask my parents if they were having a good time. Maybe it was because of all the Stellas I had drank, but I have to admit their ample kindness choked me up a little bit. But of course I would never tell them this. Instead, Ill probably throw out a bunch of sexual innuendos or write obscene comments about them on the kitchen whiteboard and just hope they know how grateful I truly am.